CANADA-FRANCE-HAWAII TELESCOPE

The 'Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope' is located near the mountain top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii at an altitude of 4,204 meters (13,793 feet). It is a Prime Focus/Cassegrain configuration with a usable aperture diameter of 3.58 meters.
CFHT hosts three state-of-the-art instruments: MegaPrime, a wide-field high resolution CCD mosaic of 36 CCDs and 340 MegaPixels; WIRCam, an infra-red mosaic of 4 detectors and 16 MegaPixels; and ESPaDOnS, a new échelle spectrograph / spectropolarimeter. Three other instruments are still available: PUEO, an adaptive optics bonette; Gecko, a very high resolution spectrograph; and MOS, the Multi Object Spectrograph.
CHFT, in collaboration with Edizioni Scientifiche Coelum, maintains a public-outreach website called "Hawaiian Starlight" which offers extremely high-quality versions of CHFT images in various formats including a yearly calendar.
The corporation is bound by a tri-partite agreement between the University of Hawaii and the governments of France and Canada. Additional funding for WIRCam came from Korea and Taiwan.

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External link

External link

★ The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation (official site)

★ [1] (Hawaiian Starlight)

★ Photos of the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and other Mauna Kea observatories from "A Gentle Rain of Starlight: The Story of Astronomy on Mauna Kea" by Michael J. West. ISBN 0-93154-899-3.